Two brothers wrongly convicted of the Christmas Eve 1991 rape and murder of Dana Ireland are waiting for the state Supreme Court to decide whether they can receive compensation for wrongful imprisonment while pursuing a federal civil rights lawsuit against Hawaii County and its police.
The federal lawsuit filed
in January by Albert “Ian” Schweitzer and Shawn Schweitzer is on hold while the state’s high court considers whether the brothers can collect from the state $50,000 a year in prison under a 2016 law while pursuing monetary damages in federal court for alleged violations of their constitutional rights by police.
Also shelved for now are the brothers’ separate claims for state compensation in Hilo Circuit Court, although a hearing is scheduled Nov. 10 before Judge Peter Kubota in Ian Schweitzer’s case.
The question before the Supreme Court was filed in May by U.S. District Chief Judge Derrick Watson, who
is presiding over the federal suit in Honolulu.
At issue is a clause in
Hawaii Revised Statutes that “sets forth the exclusive remedy for any person seeking compensation of any kind or nature whatsoever, as a result of, related to, or arising from a conviction and imprisonment for crimes for which the person was actually
innocent.”
Attorneys for the county and state are arguing the state compensation law prevents the Schweitzers from seeking monetary recompense for alleged police misconduct in federal court.
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William Harrison, an attorney for the Schweitzers, told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald that despite the some storm-
related court closures this summer and the May seating of Chief Justice Vladimir
Devens to succeed retired Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald, he thought the high court would’ve issued its
ruling by now.
“I would’ve thought they would rule pretty quickly
because, I think, the answer’s pretty clear. I think it is. The county doesn’t think so,” Harrison said. “We litigated the issue of how we are to proceed in this matter. This was a year-and-a-half or two years ago now, and I think the court, in its ruling, basically said we have a civil action we can pursue as well as a wrongful imprisonment compensation claim action. They didn’t say it in those particular words, but it was clear from the decision that was the case. … But they
haven’t ruled yet as of yet, and it could be, basically, because we just got a new (chief justice).”
Meanwhile, neither Ian Schweitzer nor Shawn Schweitzer have received any
financial compensation for time served behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit.
The Hawaii Innocence Project took up the Schweitzers’ case in 2015, and in separate hearings in 2023, Kubota vacated their convictions based on, among other things, the revelation that the DNA evidence was from one unknown perpetrator and didn’t match any of the three Hawaiian men convicted of the crime.
Falsely implicated by another defendant, Frank Pauline, Ian Schweitzer spent
23 years in prison before
being released after exoneration. After his older brother was sentenced to life in prison, Shawn Schweitzer took a plea deal for manslaughter with a probation sentence that allowed him to leave jail with time already served.
Pauline, who also was
convicted, sentenced to
180 years and murdered on his 42nd birthday in 2015 in
a New Mexico prison, later recanted his confession, saying he lied in exchange for
leniency in a drug case involving his half-brother, John Gonsalves.
In 2024, advances in DNA technology led to the identification of Albert Lauro Jr., a 57-year-old fisherman from Hawaiian Paradise Park, as the individual who actually kidnapped, raped and killed the 23-year-old Ireland, a recent college graduate from Virginia who had relocated to the Big Island.
Lauro killed himself on July 23, 2024, after police collected his DNA with a buccal swab, questioned and released him. The suicide occurred a day before authorities learned the DNA was Lauro’s.
The federal lawsuit filed in January 2025 alleges police — under pressure from the public and Ireland’s parents to solve the notorious case — arrested and charged the Schweitzers despite knowing they didn’t rape or kill Ireland.
Named as defendants in the litigation are: Hawaii County; then-HPD Chief
Benjamin Moszkowicz; then-
Deputy Chief Reed Mahuna, who’s now HPD’s chief; and retired police officers including former Chief Paul Ferreira; Detective Steven Guillermo; the late Capt. Francis Rodillas; and Capt. Raymond Simao; plus William Perreira, a former investigator for the prosecutor’s office.
Ferreira, who was the
chief immediately prior to Moszkowicz, was a detective assigned to investigate the case in the 1990s, according to the complaint.
“We should be able to resolve that issue and get on with the crux of that case, which is the claim against county police and others for what they did in the case to, basically, railroad our clients,” Harrison said. “But that being said, the state and the county has fought us on all these claims.
“Every single one of them, we had to fight for them.”
Although the state’s wrongful incarceration law has been on the books for a decade, no one has collected a settlement until this year.
Roynes Dural, a former Navy sailor wrongly convicted of sex assault, collected $420,833 in state compensation this year for wrongful imprisonment, becoming the first person to
receive a payout under
Hawaii’s wrongful conviction compensation law. Dural’s case was taken up by the
Hawaii Innocence Project, and Harrison represented him in the compensation suit.
“My client finally got his money after four or five years litigation, when there were no basis for it,” Harrison said.
And Alvin Jardine, who spent more than two decades in prison for a 1990 Maui sex assault he didn’t commit, was slated by Hawaii lawmakers to receive a $600,000 settlement. Jardine died, however, on Dec. 27, 2025, without having received the money. The funds were then designated to be paid to his daughter, Ashley Jardine.